Plenty Of Stunning Turnabouts To Go Around

August 13, 2006|By KEVIN RENNIE Kevin Rennie is a lawyer and a former Republican state lawmaker. His column appears Sundays on the Other Opinion page. He can be reached at kfrennie @yahoo.com.

For weeks, prominent Democrats parachuted into Connecticut to lecture their fellow partisans on the virtues and accomplishments of their good and close friend Sen. Joe Lieberman. Do not turn your backs on this man, they implored the state's Democratic rank and file. The world, the nation, the state and your front lawn are all better for this noble man's service.

Joe Lieberman must have a place on the primary ballot and be returned to the Senate, they insisted with varying degrees of enthusiasm.

By Wednesday morning, after Lieberman's loss to Lamont by 4 percent in a robust turnout, many of the same Democrats announced that was now essential to the commonweal that Lieberman not have a place on the ballot and that he abandon any hope of returning to the Senate. It was enough to make the rest of us wonder if perhaps leaders and party apparatchiks do not always tell us what they are really thinking.

It is not often we get to see such adjusting, forgetting and hypocrisy on display in one week. It was glorious to witness so much fast shifting among those who endlessly claim to be stolid and reliable in their opinions.

One of the top prizes in this competitive field goes to Lieberman himself. When he gave his defiant concession address on Tuesday night, he wore a new tablet of beliefs. The man who has spent more than three decades as a grasping, partisan Democrat suddenly hated party politics. Lieberman's line denigrating the partisanship of the Democratic primary must have been lifted from a Monty Python sketch.

Now Lieberman, because he cannot betray the principles he holds on any particular day, shall nobly proceed to try to hold onto the Senate seat that he views as his and his alone. He will run as the only candidate of a party named after himself. Ah, yes, ``Lieberman'' is another word for sacrifice.

To win, however, Lieberman must drop the Democratic drag and appeal directly to Republicans and independent voters. In the many years that Lieberman has luxuriated in prominence, however, it is hard to recall him ever supporting anyone other than a Democrat. What does spring to mind are the relentless attempts by Lieberman and his fellow Democrats to hector Green Party candidate Ralph Nader out of the 2000 presidential race when he appeared to threaten the prospects of Al Gore and Joe Lieberman.

Ned Lamont had his own sojourn into hypocrisy as he claimed victory on Tuesday night before a jubilant crowd in Meriden -- or, as members of the national press kept calling it, ``Meridian.'' We can expect more of these moments from Lamont as he becomes imprisoned in the rigid requirements of ideological politics.

The biggest clanger of the night came after the crowd started chanting ``62 to 1,'' the ratio of lobbyists to legislators in Washington. Lamont's standard speech decries the pernicious influence of lobbyists in American politics. And so it was a tribute to what a fine politician Lamont is quickly becoming that he could condemn lobbyists in the most contemptuous way and then pay fulsome tribute to his campaign manager, Tom Swan, a registered lobbyist. Ned might not be as different from Joe as he's led supporters to think.

More troublesome, however, are Lamont's evolving public views of the world. On Wednesday, he was a guest on MSNBC's ``Hardball'' and seemed to suggest that the miseries of the world find their root in American foreign policy. He indicated that he believes the war between Israel and the terrorist army of Hezbollah would not be blazing if America had not invaded Iraq.

Lamont's is a frightening point of view that ignores decades of determination by Islamic terrorists to kill Jews. The means have become more lethal and sophisticated, but there is nothing new in the purpose. To blame George W. Bush for the missiles flying from southern Lebanon into northern Israeli towns betrays a malignant partisanship by Lamont that ought to alarm voters on most spots of the political spectrum.

It's enough to make voters glad Joe Lieberman has decided to fight on.